“Your mother – and I will say my sister’s name as I please, boy – was supposed to pass the knowledge to you, and if not her then your father after her. I had no way of knowing she’d failed in her task.”
“She was dead before I was twelve! And my father damned near jumped into the grave after her – she – she tried, I think, but there was so little time.”
“And what was I supposed to do with you, after I’d discovered her failure to teach you restraint? She’d never deigned to tell me her techniques, even though the fire she held consumed her from within, so when Ranalae offered to take you in and teach you discipline, how was I to decline? I am sorry I sent you away, but it was far too dangerous to keep you here, you must see that. And spreading the rumor that you’d lost your sel-sense kept you safe, kept your people open to loving you should the Bone Tower ever teach you well enough to return. But when I heard you’d run away from them–”
He thrust a trembling hand between them. “Stop. Just. Stop. Teach me discipline? Run away? Have you no fucking clue what Ranalae is, what actually happens in the Bone Tower? It’s not named for its pretty white walls, Auntie. It’s named for the experiments-turned-corpses buried at its feet.”
“The empress would never–”
“The empress is dead!” Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to clue his auntie in to Thratia’s little tale of a political coup. He needed his auntie blind to Thratia’s motives, needed her to keep Ranalae around so that the imperial fleet’s presence would perform as a stopgap to keep Thratia from swooping right in. Without Ranalae’s numbers here, bolstering the city’s defenses, Thratia may not even need him to take control.
And then he’d be given over into Aella’s complete care. Thratia’s loyalties were to her own power, and the second she didn’t need him as an heir she’d relegate him to specimen.
“Don’t be a fool,” she snapped. “I received a letter from her just this morning.”
Delivered by Ranalae’s couriers, no doubt, but he wasn’t about to press the point.
“You washed your hands of me. You cut me loose, bundled me away to the whitecoats and never gave it a second thought. Did you ever write to them to ask how my so-called training was going? Did you ever inquire after their methods of teaching? No, you fucking didn’t, because as strong as you are, as clever as you are, I think you knew.
“Not wholly, not the complete picture, but a smart woman like you should have a pretty good idea of what an empire would do with a man who could be turned into a walking weapon. But you saw a solution to your little problem, a way to clean up the mess you felt my mother left behind, so you shoved me away behind those walls, across a sea, and thought no more of me.
“Were you afraid, when you’d heard I’d escaped? You must have had an idea as to why.” He stepped forward. She stepped back. He let the words course through him, let the old hurts bleed out through his lips, and marveled, silently, that he didn’t feel the slightest urge to tear the sky to pieces while he rode his anger.
“You must have wondered if I might come home, looking for vengeance. Is that why you only ever wrote to me of banal things? Is that why all your letters were about who married who, and what crops were doing well that year? To keep an eye on my mental stability without ever asking outright? Not once. Not fucking once, did you ask what had happened to me there. Did you ask if I was safe? If I was hurting? You let the rumors swirl about a disgraced lord who’d lost his sel-sense and turned to conning for food and fun, and stuck your head deep in the sand.
“If you’re angry at all that I’ve come here with Thratia on my arm, you have only yourself to blame. You cut me loose, left me to suffer, and didn’t so much as send a bouquet of flowers, but you couldn’t be bothered to renounce me as heir, either, and now it’s biting you straight in the ass, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t abandon you,” she whispered, and he felt ill to see a sheen of tears building in the corners of her eyes. “Tibal was supposed to–”
“What the fuck do you know about Tibal?”
She pressed her lips shut hard, as if to snap back the words. “He never told you?”
A knock on the door made them both jump. “Everything all right in there?” Aella’s voice, smooth, but tinged with warning. His senses had reached out without his conscious agreement at Tibs’s name, he hadn’t even noticed. Some wounds were just too fresh to risk picking at. Whatever his auntie thought she knew about Tibs would have to wait.
“Fine,” he grated, reeling himself back under control. Aella must have jumped out of her skin when she’d felt him reach out like a shockwave. His sphere of influence was beginning to unsettle even himself. It seemed every time he reached, he reached farther than before. Not necessarily a good thing, when one was surrounded by five active selium mines. He’d better get off this ship, before his auntie got them all blown to bits.
“Did Pelkaia make it here?” he asked. She blinked, the change in subject sudden enough to take her off guard.
“Yes – and your friends, Tibal, Ripka, and those others. I don’t like that Honey woman.”
“I don’t really care what you like.” The words were out before he could stop them, his temper still high though he’d reeled in his power. As a young man, he would have rather cut his own tongue out than speak this way to her. His auntie had been the domineering force of his life ever since the day his mother had died – for his father’s spirit had fled on that day, as well – guiding, but always firm. Now, he’d discovered there were greater terrors in the world. And he’d faced them, and won.
And would again.
“You really are just like Elatraia. Careful it doesn’t burn you up from the inside, too.”
He ignored the jab, and fell back on formality. “We will bring the Dread Wind to the palace to begin preparations for the marriage ceremony. See that my friends come to see me.”
“They have fled into the city, or so my guards tell me. I have no way of contacting them.”
“Fled?”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. “I had placed them under house arrest at the Hotel Cinder until this whole silly invasion of your betrothed was over. They took poorly to the treatment.”
He snort-laughed. “I can only imagine. Why in a clear sky would you ever find it necessary to lock them up?”
“They intervened one too many times in my methods of preparing the city.”
“Do you know how you can be certain you’ve walked down the wrong path?”
“I suspect you’ll tell me.”
“Ripka Leshe disagrees with you.”
“This is my city.”
“For now,” he said, and sighed, reaching up to drag a hand through the hair he’d worked so hard to arrange into nobleman perfection. “Be safe, Auntie.”
She reached to him, fingers curling to clasp his shoulder, but he had already turned, and felt little more than the brush of her fingertips against his sleeve. The air had grown cooler while he’d been in that cabin, the sunlight muted by a lazy drifting of clouds. He shoved his hands into his pockets and strolled over to Thratia’s side, sliding his affable smile back into place like slotting a key.
“Auntie Honding has offered us use of her private dock for the Dread Wind while you and I prepare for the happily-ever-after.”
Thratia’s brows lifted, but Dame Honding had followed him out just close enough to have overheard, and she nodded mute agreement.
“This is preposterous,” Ranalae insisted, her color already up as she continued on whatever argument she and Thratia had been having before the Hondings reappeared. “Dame Honding does not wish to relinquish control of her family’s holdings to you, Thratia. We all know this wedding is a farce. To the pits with your heir, Dame, this is an invasion – though a subtle one. Our fleet is well equipped. If Thratia wishes to claim your city, then let her try to take it from us.”
Dame Honding looked at Ranalae like she’d discovered a stray dog digging up her garden. “Hon
d Steading stays in the Honding family blood, and Detan is my only heir. Who he chooses to wed is his own business.”
“You wrote to our empress asking for protection from this woman, and now you spread your arms and welcome her to your family bosom?”
“Are you blind, or just stupid?” Detan said, keeping his voice level lest Aella get jumpy over him arguing with a whitecoat – with the whitecoat.
“Excuse me, boy?”
“Boy?” Detan snorted and pulled himself to his full height. All this bickering was beginning to wear on him. “I am heir to this city, Ranalae, while you are little more than its guest.”
“This city is defended.” She spread her arms to indicate the ships she’d brought with her, mingled in amongst Hond Steading’s regular fleet. It made him ill to see them there, the weapons of a monster arrayed like spike pits around the city he loved.
“By me.” Detan held up a hand, a casual gesture, and poised his fingers as if ready to snap them. “Would you care to do battle, Ranalae of the Bone Tower? You know what I am, let’s not forget that, and you know who’s been training me. Tell me, do you think your ships could answer your call before I dropped them all from the sky? You are correct – this negotiation is a polite farce. But it is a farce because we could wipe you from the sky without a thought, you dribbling sycophant.”
“You would destroy all those lives, just to prove a point?”
“Ranalae, I would burn the very ship I stand on now if I could be assured no trace of you or your forces would be left on this world.”
He turned, taking Thratia’s elbow firmly in hand as if he did so all the time, and called over his shoulder. “Make the dock ready, we will arrive before nightfall.”
When they were back on the heavy deck of the Dread Wind, Thratia extricated her arm from his grip and raised a brow at him. “Impressive performance, Honding. I almost believed you’d burn us all myself.”
He closed the space between them, set both palms against the cabin wall to either side of her face, and leaned down, over her. “That was no performance, lover. If I have a chance to burn that woman and all that would continue her work from the world, make no mistake: I will take it, no matter the cost.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Hond Steading buzzed with rumors under the shadows of the invading fleet. They pressed Ripka on all sides, fragments of whispers and declarations of doomsday following her down every street. Her only consolation was that Tibal, Enard, and Dranik looked just as wary as she did. Though she missed having Honey at her side, she was glad they’d left the injured woman with Latia to rest. The streets hummed with tension, and Ripka held no doubts that Honey would have itched to add to their song. She hoped Latia kept Honey well sedated while they were gone.
A beggar woman stepped into Ripka’s path. Rags impregnated with dust draped her body, and she clutched a paper-wrapped bouquet of hastily plucked pricklebrush flowers, their petals drooping and only half the thorns stripped from their stems.
“Flowers for the royal wedding?” she asked, shoving one hand forward with a cupped palm for grains.
Foul breath gusted against Ripka’s cheek, but she’d spent more than enough time working with the beggars of Aransa to be put off by such a simple thing. “What wedding?” she asked, digging in her pockets to make the woman linger.
“The only rumor that’s true!” the woman crowed. She glanced left and right, then leaned forward and brought a hand up to shield the side of her lips as she whispered. “The Lord Honding has returned and is to wed Thratia Ganal.”
Ripka froze. “That can’t be right.”
“Got it off the palace guards themselves.” She wiggled her hand, and Ripka deposited a copper grain into it mechanically. The woman moved to give her a flower, but she waved her off.
“For the information,” she said, and the woman gave her what might have been a sarcastic bow before trundling away to find her next mark.
For a moment, all four of them just stood there, contemplating the woman’s information, and Ripka was glad for the silence of her companions. Her gaze dragged across the dusty streets of the city and found the massive shape of Thratia’s new flagship, the Dread Wind, drifting with slow precision toward the towers of the Honding family palace. Her fleet remained on the edge of the city, poised for action, but not invading. Not yet. Why should they, when their mistress was prepared to marry the city’s heir and take the throne through legal means?
Clever bitch. She’d spent years positioning herself in Aransa to be elected to the Warden’s seat, nice and smooth, when the position finally opened up. Ripka had assumed she’d use Detan as a weapon, if she could force him to do her bidding. She had not considered that she might force him to her bed.
Nausea gripped her at the thought, and she shook it away. Detan was in a dire position, but he was not without teeth of his own. And yet…
He was her friend. Her friend was up there, on that ship, just out of reach. Being paraded around like a trophy. Subjected to… perhaps, well. Her stomach clenched. She could not form the word in her mind. Just thinking around its edges made her want to rally all of Hond Steading’s watchers and storm that ship, rip Detan from Thratia’s vile hands.
“We have to get word to him, somehow, that we can help…”
“Not exactly on friendly terms with the palace,” Tibal said.
“We’re not, no. But Pelkaia is.”
“Last she saw him, she looked willing to rip his face off, and I don’t think this news will smooth matters over much.”
“Are you saying we shouldn’t try?”
Tibal’s head dropped as he kicked at the ground and tugged his hat down to hide his eyes. “No, Captain. Just sayin’ we don’t know where his mind is.”
“You really think he’s skipping through fields of flowers hand-in-hand with Thratia?”
“No.” The word was harsh, bitter. “But I’m not sure us interfering would help him any, and we got our own troubles to manage.”
“You’re certain he doesn’t want her?” Dranik asked, a deep furrow between his brows. Ripka coughed over a laugh. Of course he wouldn’t know any better. None of the citizenry of Hond Steading had heard anything but wild rumor about their heir for the last few years, and none of it added up to make Detan look like a particularly stable individual. Marrying a bloodthirsty tyrant just might seem like a grand ole time to him, as far as they knew.
“There are few people in this world Detan hates more than Thratia, and I’m reasonably certain that the only reason she doesn’t return the sentiment is because she can’t be bothered mustering up the energy to care one way or another. He’s a tool for her to gain the throne legally, nothing more.”
“Why would he agree to such a match, then?”
Tibal snorted and stared pointedly at the heavy ships spread across the sky like ink stains. “Because he doesn’t want bloodshed in this city any more than we do. Damn fool is probably arrogant enough to think he’ll retain some control of his throne after he’s hitched himself off to her.”
“I pray he’s not stupid enough to bed her, then,” Dranik said.
Enard, Ripka, and Tibal exchanged a look. It was Ripka who managed to ask, “Why is that?”
“If she cares so little for him, then once he gets an heir on her he’ll be useless to her.”
“Shit,” Tibal said.
Ripka closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “We have to get a message through to him, somehow. If she casts him off…”
“Aella will catch him,” Enard said.
The three shivered. Dranik looked thoroughly put out. “Who is Aella?”
“A nasty little friend of Thratia’s,” Ripka sighed and opened her eyes. Time to focus. “Come, let’s get this meeting with your people over with, Dranik. Maybe they’ll have some information we can use.”
* * *
Dranik led them to an inconspicuous door along a street full of mercer houses. Judging by the sweet scen
t emanating from within, they were at the trade room of a bright eye berry distributor. Not the most nefarious of locales, but Ripka knew from long experience that a posh setting often hid the darkest of dealings.
Dranik scarcely knocked once before the door swung open. A barrel-chested man with a moustache drooping down past the line of his chin set a wary squint on them all.
“Dranik tole me two ladies were comin’,” he said, and jabbed a finger at Tibal. “Unless you’re particularly ugly, miss, you and your manfriend there are unexpected company. Not much a fan of uninvited guests.”
“We need all the help we can get,” Dranik shot back, throwing glances over both his shoulders. No one would have had reason to be suspicious of a plain trading house until he started up that darting glance nonsense. Ripka sighed and stepped forward, extending her hand to the man.
“I understand and respect your caution. My name is Ripka, and I can assure you these men are of the same mind as I.”
He took her hand and squeezed it a touch too hard. “Name’s Calson, and I appreciate your forwardness, but I’d like to know just what mind you’re of. Dranik gave us warning you were coming, and told us why, but I’d rather hear it straight from your lips, miss, if you don’t mind my saying so. Lot of tension ‘round these parts. You understand.”
Not only did she understand, she was absolutely relieved that someone had a suspicious bent in this group. If they really did accept her without so much as a sideways glance she’d be wondering if they really were working for Thratia.
She squeezed his hand with equal measure. “The three of us were all present when Thratia took Aransa.” The words when Aransa fell were on the tip of her tongue. She forced herself to bite them back. “And we’d like to help see her succeed here in Hond Steading. There are four of us, another woman as you were told, but she’s recovering from an injury. She should be with us at the next meeting.”
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